Cognitive map plasticity and imitation strategies to improve individual and social behaviors of autonomous agents

Abstract

Starting from neurobiological hypotheses on the existence of place cells (PC) in the brain, the aim of this article is to show how little assumptions at both individual and social levels can lead to the emergence of non-Trivial global behaviors in a multi-Agent system (MAS). In particular, we show that adding a simple, hebbian learning mechanism on a cognitive map allows autonomous, situated agents to adapt themselves in a dynamically changing environment, and that even using simple agent-following strategies (driven either by similarities in the agent movement, or by individual marks-"signatures"-in agents) can dramatically improve the global performance of the MAS, in terms of survival rate of the agents. Moreover, we show that analogies can be made between such a MAS and the emergence of certain social behaviors.